Valle de La Luna Beats Up Anne

Just outside of San Pedro de Atacama is a small park called Valle de la Luna (~valley of the moon).  When you see it, it is pretty clear how they came up with that name.  It looks like what you might imagine the moon's surface to look like.  Or, Mars.  In fact, they tested the Mars rover here, supposedly because it has the conditions that closest approximate what NASA thought Mars would be like.

The approach to the park is almost as amazing as the park itself.  At more than one point, Mark was not sure if he had already entered the park.  Luckily, they charged 3000 pesos at the gate so he could keep track of when he entered (that's like 6 bucks, U.S.).

The Valle of the Luna is pretty lifeless, as not much is able to live in this environment.  Even a lot of the typical desert plants and critters have a hard time due to the high elevation, high salt content and general deadish-ness of the area.

The park is contained within a larger preserve, but the Valle de la Luna section is only a few miles long.  There are places to pull off and tour certain attractions (amphitheater, dunes, particular formations, etc).  One of the first that we saw was a winding path through some caverns.  The pamphlet they gave at the entrance clearly stated that you would need a flashlight when entering the cavern.  Mark and Anne don't read no sticking pamphlets.  Long story short - Anne got halfway through the cavern and turned around because she didn't have a flashlight.

The big attraction of Valle de la Luna is supposed to be watching the sun set over the rock formations.  You might notice that none of our photos in this post have a sunset.  While we arrived in plenty of time to get into position for the sunset, so did all of the other tourists.  So our group tried to find a less crowded spot, as well as kill a little time prior to the magic hour.

So we checked out the formations.  As you can see, parts of the area are covered in salt.  There are abandoned salt mines in the area as well.  But you can only LOOK at rock formations so many times.  So we decided we were going to climb up one of the formations.  There was a path marked and we could see other people had made it to the summit, so it seemed like a reasonable idea.  It was probably too sketchy for HBomb (also too hot and dry).  So it was going to be one at a time.  Anne went first....

 The path up the rock/dune/deathtrap combo was clearly marked at the bottom, and then for an additional 50 feet or so.  Then it was not marked.  Anne is crafty, though.  She saw a guided tour being led up an unmarked path, so she followed at a distance.  Surely, she could just follow their footsteps.  That worked for awhile.  Near the top, the tour group went around  corner.  Anne followed, but when she turned the corner, the tour group was gone and there were no tracks.  She took advantage of the opportunity to check out the view and the rocks and what not, but eventually realized, there was no more path.  No clear way down.  Just sand and rocks with no path and drop offs in every direction.

Nice view, but where do we go now?

 Ummm, guys?






Eventually, Anne saw the group she had been following on a path below her.  But how did they get there?  Their footprints in the sand had already been wiped away by high winds (there were some weird "grooves" in the sand, but certainly not footsteps).  The guide leading the other group had noticed Anne's stranded status, but.... hey, she didn't pay for the guided tour, so she was kind of on her own.  Was this the end for Anne?

Of course not.  Eventually another group made it to the top.  Anne kept a close watch on them and saw the unthinkable.  The group traversed the dunes not by marked path, but because the guide had memorized where the safe places to walk were.  And then to get down?  Sit on your butt and slide down the dunes (the grooves were from the butts of tourists past).

So after this ordeal, Anne finally made it back to the safety of the CRV.  "I did not enjoy any part of that," was her reaction.  Mark decided that he was not going to make this climb and the trio headed back to civilization.  Checking out that sunset at Valle de La Luna will have to wait until the next visit.